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  • Letter

Inflationary gravitational wave background as a tail effect

Niko Jokela*, K. Kajantie†, and Miika Sarkkinen‡

M. Laine§

Sami Nurmi∥

  • Department of Physics, P.O. Box 64, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland and Helsinki Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 64, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

  • AEC, ITP, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

  • Department of Physics, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland and Helsinki Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 64, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

  • *niko.jokela@helsinki.fi
  • †keijo.kajantie@helsinki.fi
  • ‡miika.sarkkinen@helsinki.fi
  • §laine@itp.unibe.ch
  • ∥sami.t.nurmi@jyu.fi
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Phys. Rev. D 108, L101503 – Published 27 November, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.L101503

Abstract

The free propagator of a massless mode in an expanding universe can be written as a sum of two terms, a light cone and a tail part. The latter describes a subluminal (timelike) signal. We show that the inflationary gravitational wave background, influencing cosmic microwave background polarization and routinely used for constraining inflationary models through the so-called r ratio, originates exclusively from the tail part.

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Phys. Rev. D 108, L101503– Published 27 November, 2023
  • Received 5 April 2023
  • Accepted 22 September 2023
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